


Catch Me Before You Fall

by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Sex, Biting, Blood Drinking, Blow Jobs, Clubbing, Community: daily_deviant, Dancing, Draco Being a Git, Draco being oblivious, Draco being really actually thirsty, Hand Jobs, Harry being oblivious, Harry being thirsty, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Nearly Omniscient Bartender, POV Harry Potter, POV Second Person, Rimming, Switching, Vampire Draco Malfoy, but aren't they all, mild jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22973758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosed_quill/pseuds/lq_traintracks
Summary: Draco, newly turned, shows up on Harry’s doorstep.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 71
Kudos: 999
Collections: Daily Deviant





	Catch Me Before You Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Daily Deviant's February theme of 'Everything Old Is New Again', for which I chose: human/part-human creatures: vampire; and kissing

He shows up on your doorstep after it happens.

You don’t remember the last time you saw him. A year, maybe less. It was on the street, just the improbable blond of his hair catching your eye as you walked in different directions. A pause in your step. A breath. It was a long time ago. To say it’s a shock to find Draco Malfoy shivering in front of you, clothes plastered to his body as though he walked in the rain all the way from Kensington, would be putting it very mildly. There’s no choice but to process it quickly. Because he literally falls into your arms. And it’s either catch him, or let him puddle into a heap on your foyer floor.

What else can you do? 

You catch him.

You watch him sleeping on the sofa in your study, the fire crackling in the hearth and flickering warm light over his pale face. His too-pale face. You think you realised it in that first moment you saw him; the differences are subtle but also unmistakeable when you know what to look for. And you do. Working in the Beast, Being, and Spirit Division of Magical Creatures at the Ministry for the last three years gives you special insight. It also explains why he would come here, even though you hate each other, even after all the pain it’s been knowing each other.

Still, you think Hermione might have been a better choice. She punched him in the face; it’s at least somewhat exorcised from her system, more so than it is from yours. Sectumsempra only made things worse after all. 

His eyelashes flutter, on the verge of opening, and it snaps you from your reverie. You sit forward in your chair. And when he lurches, instant fear transforming his face, you kneel next to him, take his shoulders, and hold him there.

“Malfoy.”

He’s uncommonly strong—or commonly strong, for what he is now—and you feel his ability to fling you off before even he does. 

“I don’t want to have to Incarcerous you,” you tell him. “Stop fighting me. Lie back.”

His eyes finally open, and you somehow keep the horrified look off your face. His eyes, always that odd sheen of grey, are now so starkly silver it’s like melted pewter. Like mercury, swimming around the deep black of pupil. He looks at you, maybe surprised it’s you after all. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, where he was going. Maybe it’s an accident he wound up here.

He whispers it: “Potter?” And even his voice has changed. It’s the voice of someone between worlds, half-whisper, half-music.

His recognition slows his fight, and you take your hands from his body, trying to ignore how cold he still is, even after you ran three Drying charms over him and warmed the room to absurd degrees.

“No,” he says, like his throat wants to close on the word. “No, I can’t be here.” He sits up but immediately topples back again.

“Dizzy?” you ask, already reaching for the phials you Summoned while he was passed out.

He nods, and then groans at how very likely _more_ dizzy this has made him. “And… weak,” he says. 

You keep your gaze on the labels in front of you, not wanting him to see. He thinks he’s weak. And yet you know he could send you flying across the room with one shove if he wanted.

“Drink this,” you tell him, thrusting the dual Pepper-Up and Calming Draught at him. 

“I can’t be here,” he says again. There’s the edge of panic in the flicker of his eyes.

“Yes, you can.” You’re not sure where your own surety comes from. Maybe simply from not wanting him roaming the streets like this, doing Merlin knows what kind of harm. “Look, I’m going to leave this here and come right back. Drink it. It’ll help. I’ll be right back,” you repeat when he looks somehow both frightened of you leaving and terrified of you staying.

What he must be going through.... You stamp down on the emotion that wants to rise, something like pity. 

“Don’t leave,” you tell him. “I only need five minutes.” He watches you cross the room, his eyes following you so urgently you can feel them at your back, as though he’s right behind you.

When you turn in the doorway, he’s still half-collapsed on your sofa. “Malfoy,” you say, “don’t leave. Promise me.”

He blinks, slowly, just the once. He nods. 

From your bedroom you Floo Hermione’s office at the hospital. It’s late. She may not be there. She may be home already, and if she is, even Apparating back, it will take time you don’t have and— Suddenly, you can’t quite get your breath. The Floo beats in time with the call going through, its signal unrushed, almost bored.

You grit your teeth, squeezing your eyes closed.

“Harry?”

Thank fucking Merlin.

Her face flickers in the fire, brow knit, immediately on the alert.

What you say to her next really doesn’t help matters, surely.

“I need as much O-neg as you can spare, and I need it now.”

When you find him, he’s locked himself in your guest bathroom, the dingy one on the second floor where the hot water never works. Brilliant.

You’ve already Shrunk the blood bags and fit them through the drafty gap under the door. You flick your wand and resize them on his side.

“I just need to go home,” he pleads. From the sound of it, you’d guess he’s holed up somewhere near the loo on the far side of the room. You can just make out the shadow of his shoes. He appears to be curled up on the floor.

“You need to drink those,” you tell him. You haven’t said the actual word to him yet. He’s scared enough as it is. You’re hoping the sight of the blood will kickstart his survival instinct and that he’ll just… do it. Do what needs to be done. You don’t have to talk about it if he’ll just fucking drink it.

You haven’t thought past what to do if he does. Right now you’re just concerned that maybe he won’t. And that’s a whole other set of problems.

Oily little sobs come from under the door. It’s like sixth bloody year all over again. 

Hermione’s quick, authoritative steps on the stairs have the effect of a tonic on you, and you thank her as she sets the tray on the floor with you. “Malfoy, I have tea for…” For what? A chaser? “For when you want it. For… after,” you manage.

“I don’t want her here.”

It shouldn’t maybe, but it rankles. There’s still something of the ‘Mudblood’ condemnation in his voice, you think. Or maybe your expectation of it marrs your ability to hear anything else.

“She’s a Healer. We need her expertise.” You sigh. “But first you need to drink that.”

You point your wand and move the blood bags across the floor to him. His little shriek of panic interrupts the crying momentarily. 

You lay your palm on the door. “Look,” you say, summoning the patience that comes so easily to you when it’s anyone but Malfoy. You pretend, just for now, that he’s someone else. Someone worth it. “It’s the right thing to do. You’re not hurting anyone if you do it. You’re only hurting yourself if you don’t. And you didn’t do this to yourself, clearly. You…” A glance up at Hermione’s worried face and her little nod of reassurance bolsters you to go on. “It doesn’t make you bad.”

Silence greets your finished monologue. You and Hermione exchange looks. One minute goes by. Another. She pulls her wand, and you give a little shrug. She tries the door. It swings slowly open on a scene you’d do anything to forget. Because across the room, huddled under the dark, rain-splattered window, sits Malfoy, his teeth sunk deep into the third of three blood bags, suckling, some of the blood dripping down his chin and soaking into his white shirt.

He lifts his gaze, still going at it, and his eyes find you. Something drops into your stomach. Something hard and unyielding. Something you can never unfeel again.

“Who did this to you?”

The night is at its deepest, quiet and dull. Hermione left an hour ago, promising to bring more blood in the morning and to establish a decent connection for it. It’s a program you yourself implemented, with her help, so that new vampires don’t get stuck in the cycle of it, killing in order to stay alive, or creating others because they don’t know what they’re doing.

It’s not Malfoy’s fault he didn’t go through the proper channels. It’s a flawed system. You know that. Still, the weight of it… of having him here, now flushed with feeding and sullen-looking, cleaned up now, no longer stained from lips to chest with it—you’d shown him to a better bathroom with hot water—the weight is crushing. And your question sits in the room like a bomb, like unexploded ammunition.

“I don’t know,” Malfoy says. His tea’s gone cold in front of him. The fire has dwindled to embers. Yet he’s refused to go to bed.

“Ron’s an Auror. We can find—”

“No,” he says sharply, his eyes cutting to yours. The silver winds around his pupils like inky memories in a Pensieve. You try not to notice that his pupils are still slightly blown. Slowly, he licks his lips, as if seeking the ghost of flavour. He blinks and looks away, looks into the fire that now reflects in his eyes. “Potter, I can’t…”

You wait for him to finish, but he never does.

“I can’t let you leave here.”

“Why not?” The fatalism in his voice is like a mirror-image of his arrogance. “I can just take my bags—” He gestures to the blood sitting on your coffee table like there’s a spotlight on them. “—and I’ll go…” He flings a hand in the general direction of the door.

“You don’t know how to… do this yet,” you say.

“I’m guessing I’ll figure it out,” he tells you, an ironic and resigned smile flickering over his face, so that you’re treated to a glint of incisor, retracted but still prevalent. 

“You’re still in shock.”

“You don’t know _what_ I am.” His hard gaze shimmers, like a mirage, and he turns his face from you before he crumbles. He manages, somehow, not to, and you wonder what you would do in his place. Probably get as far from your loved ones as possible. His whole life, his entire existence, is different now.

“You need to sleep.” You say it quietly, nonthreateningly, and watch him wilt in his chair with the truth of it. You stand. “Come on. There’s a room ready.”

When he follows you out of the study, his steps slightly dragging with exhaustion, his blood bags clutched to his chest like a security blanket or a teddy bear, you feel him behind you. And nothing about him, even on the verge of collapse again, feels anything other than dangerous.

He’s so weak at first that you really don’t have to worry about him leaving. If he needed to, if he got his adrenaline up, he could snap your neck. You carefully give him no reason to become agitated, which frankly means not spending very much time around him at all. So many things about you agitate him and vice versa. 

He spends a majority of his time in the room you set up for him, sleeping mostly, feeding when he needs to (he leaves the empty bags rather than Vanishing them so that you know he’s not ignoring them). You know if he stopped drinking, there’d come a time when the need would be too much and he’d lose himself to it. Hopefully, if even intuitively, he understands this basic new truth himself.

When you knock, he leaves you standing in the silence. When you bring him a few changes of clothes and leave them outside the door, they’re gone when next you check.

On the third day, though, he summons you, sending a memo to find you; it’s shaped like a bird. Just like old times.

 _Do you have anything for fever?_ he writes.

“Bloody hell,” you mutter, getting up from your desk where you’ve been working from home as much as you can.

“Merlin,” you gasp upon seeing him. He’s sweating, shivering. He’s abandoned his pyjama top, but he’s half bundled into the bedclothes instead. His skin looks clammy and unhealthy, his eyes pale. 

“It’s alright,” you tell him, affecting a casual tone. You’ve seen this before. You double the dose of the fever medication and watch him swallow it.

When you go to lay the back of your hand against his forehead he jerks back.

“May I?” you ask. 

He blinks.

“It’s me or I call Hermione,” you sigh. “You came here for a reason, Malfoy, and if you’re going to be convalescing under my roof then I’m bloody well going to see to it that you don’t shrivel up and expire, alright?”

He looks down, somewhere into the middle distance between you, round about where your heart would be underneath clothes, skin, flesh and bone. “As if I could.”

“You can be in a bad enough state that you’ll wish you could,” you say.

He looks up at your face again, at first perplexed, and then with a strange smile. “Thank you for sugar-coating my predicament, Potter.”

“You’re welcome. Now, may I?”

He hesitates and then jerkily nods. He lets you lay your hand against his head. It’s… almost the temperature of regular human skin. The vampire equivalent of a fever, for sure.

 _Vampire._ You hadn’t even said it to yourself yet. Not about him, at least.

When you remove your hand, he seems to relax a bit more. 

“The potion will take a few minutes. You should drink a blood broth too.”

He gives you a look like you may be mad.

“It’s an old hag recipe. Hermione swears by it. _Don’t,_ ” you warn when you see a flicker of amusement, Malfoy making the connections between your statements. “Don’t say it.”

“I don’t have any idea what you might be talking about, Potter,” Malfoy says. His lips twitch once, and then he snuggles down further into blankets that already want to swallow him up.

You sigh and continue, “You just warm it up on the hob, add a few spices…” You shrug. You pretend you’re not talking about him drinking blood, like he’s just got a cold or something. When in reality, his body is revolting against its new circumstances. It’s rebelling, fighting it like a virus, rejecting the very blood it’s consumed, the blood it needs.

“Will you try it?” you ask.

He’s frowning now, not meeting your gaze. He’s got his blankets pulled up to his chin, like a child. He nods.

You fix him his blood broth and leave it on the nightstand. You have Kreacher check that he’s finished with it, and the elf reports back that Malfoy’s temperature is back to glacial.

You go to bed. But you can’t sleep. The feel of his skin under your hand… You look at your own fingers in the moonlight, rub two together against your thumb. It had almost tingled, to touch him. His undead skin had felt more alive to you than your own.

You turn your face from the light coming in, force yourself to close your eyes, and sleep without dreaming.

His screams wake you, and for a moment you’re too surprised to move. Surprised that it’s not your own screams, torn from your own throat, like usual. This is coming from outside of you. This is coming from down the hall.

You run on bare feet and burst into his room to find him thrashing. The bedclothes are in a haphazard pile on the floor.

“Malfoy. Malfoy!” 

You really have no choice but to try to subdue him, so you brace yourself, put a Protego on for good measure, and then attempt to wrestle him into compliant wakefulness. 

The first thing he does is split your lip with a backhand. The fact that it tore through your protection spell is… sobering.

But then he jolts fully awake, eyes wild. He scrabbles at you until you say his name again. Finally, his gaze meets yours. But only for a moment. And then it slips down.

Because your lip is bleeding.

He stares at it with an intensity that sends a shockwave through you. He makes a sound in his throat. And then he grabs for the blood bag on his nightstand, rolling away from you on the bed, cowering in the far corner, in the shadows, so that you can only see the back of his bent head as he voraciously feeds.

You watch, sucking your lip into your mouth and then casting a Healing charm over it for good measure. Just in case.

When he’s finished, Malfoy throws the empty bag aside and covers his face, hands like claws, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes.

“It was my mother. In the dream.”

His voice, his words, make you draw a quick breath. You hadn’t expected him to confide in you. You keep quiet, encouraging him with your silence to go on.

“I… I was killing her,” he says. “I thought once He was gone… the Dark Lord… I wouldn’t…” He swallows. Then suddenly, he’s standing. He’s making for the door. “I have to leave.”

“Wait,” you say, body jumping into action. You meet him at the door, a hand on his shoulder, and he whirls on you. 

“ _Don’t._ ”

His shoulder under your hand had felt cool but not cold. It had been hard as stone.

“You don’t know anything about what this is going to be like for you.”

“Don’t I?” he nearly snarls. “And you’re going to tell me then?” He Summons clothes out of the bureau—tight black jeans and a t-shirt—and hastily begins to dress. “You’re going to tell me how much blood I need to consume in a day to stay alive?” T-shirt pulled over his head, tousling his hair. “Although, ‘alive’ is really pushing it, isn’t it?” Pyjama trousers off, revealing legs like marble. Jeans on. Boots. One and then the other. “You should feel how slow my pulse is. And yes, I do still have one. You probably know all about that, with your work. But do you know how shitty those blood bags taste? How cold and lifeless? The plastic against your lips? Do you know how badly I want to kill someone? Do you know how much I want the hot spill of it down my throat?” Then, voice changed, “You’d do. Do you know that? That’s why I came here.” He’s now backing you across the room. “I didn’t come here for your _help_.” He spits the word, like it’s beneath him to say it. “I came here because you’re the one person I’d never miss if I did it.”

His eyes bore into you, no less so for the slightly reddish tinge of tears swimming there now.

“I’d kill you in a heartbeat, Potter.”

You don’t know why you say what you say next. Gryffindor recklessness maybe. Or the unearned certainty that he won’t. But you say it all the same, “Then do it, Malfoy.”

He charges you, slamming you against the wall, his bared teeth all you can see. He’s looking at your carotid artery like it’s the Christmas feast at Hogwarts. The forbidden apple, mouthwateringly sweet. He holds you there, suspended inside this moment of his choice. You watch his dilated eyes, watch him make a split-second decision, as he growls and turns away, stalking out of the room.

You feel him leave, the lack of him like a vacuum, drawing out all the air in the room. Everything around you sighs and settles. You sink, blood thudding wildly, to the floor.

“You _what?_ ” It’s Hermione, trunk full of new blood bags dropping out of her hand.

You shrug. “I tried to get him to stay. It’s not like I could make him.”

“Well, you are a wizard, Harry, and a pretty good one. You could have done _something_.”

“He wanted to leave,” you tell her.

“He’s traumatised! He doesn’t know what he wants!”

_I’d kill you in a heartbeat, Potter._

“He’s not a prisoner here.”

She gives you a hard look. “I’ll let Ron know. He can—”

“No. Hermione, you can’t send Aurors out looking for a new vampire who _might_ bite someone. Malfoy’s an arse, but he’s not a murderer.”

“Well, what do you propose we do?”

You take a deep breath. Hermione is just as vigilant as ever. She’d go looking for a hundred more Horcruxes if they were out there to be found. “Nothing,” you say and watch her cloud over like a professor about to deduct house points. But you shake your head. “You can leave the blood, but… He’s a grown wizard, not without resources. If he wants to leave…”

“It’s a mistake, Harry.”

You set your jaw, words forming that you don’t wish to have to say: _I’m done saving people!_

But she relents, leaving the trunk by your umbrella stand. “Floo me if you need anything.”

“I always do.”

She graces you with one of her knowing smiles, that hand on your arm that makes you feel anchored down to something safer than your own skin.

It’s nearly one in the morning, a good twenty-three hours since Malfoy fled, yet you haven’t been able to bring yourself to go upstairs, not last night and not tonight. You worked from home again, filling your day with the backlog of reports you tend to stockpile until the last minute anyway. You watched your telly, flung a Snitch up into the air and watched it bat about the room. Your eyes are closing as you recline on the sofa. You should just go to bed. Go to bed and then get up in the morning and go to work. Resume your life before Malfoy came barging… well, fainting, into it.

You don’t move. You drift, lying there. Dreams of snakes whisper to you. You twitch. And then… the Forest of Dean. You’re colder than cold. Everything around you has died. The world withers around you as you shiver uncontrollably.

It happens out of nowhere, the crack of his Apparition, his howl of pain erupting a murder of crows from a nearby tree. Ron Splinches himself, blood everywhere. You go for bandages and find only old copies of _The Daily Prophet_ proclaiming Sirius’s guilt for every crime ever committed. They won’t staunch the blood. Ron looks up at you, bleeding out on the forest floor. “Your… fault…” he gurgles, blood filling his mouth. You blink, and it’s not Ron, it’s Malfoy. “Your fault.”

You sit up, panting, but it wasn’t the dream that woke you. It’s the pounding at your door. It’s the faint cry of your name, “ _Harry_.”

You don’t know where the foresight comes from… the idea to grab a bag of blood (the case of them has been in your study since Hermione left) on your way to let him in. 

You also draw your wand.

And good thing. Because as pathetic as he sounds on the other side of your door, once it opens to him, once he sees you—skin effusive with the very thing he needs—he’s on you.

“ _Stupefy!_ ” It sends him back a few feet, confused. His fangs gleam in the low light from the hallway. You could blast him back out into the night. For whatever reason, you don’t. You face him in the hall, like the boys you once were, ready to duel. Except that he’s wandless and a vampire, and this might just be to the death.

Malfoy growls. It’s not hatred this time, though. It’s hunger. It’s naked need. He stalks toward you, deflecting your next spell wandlessly, a distracted wave of his hand. But you’re better than he is, at least in this kind of fight, and your next Stinging hex catches him in the chest. He staggers sideways, clutching at it, and you use the opportunity to pull the blood bag from your back pocket.

“You’re not here to kill me, Malfoy. So let me help you. We both know you’re going to.”

Merlin help you, though, he certainly looks like he’s here to kill you. Heat flares in his eyes, so intense you think you can feel it from where you stand. He looks at the flimsy bag, only a little taste of what he’ll be needing at this point. He obviously hasn’t fed since he left. You don’t want to feel it, but a part of you acknowledges the strength it must have taken, to resist all those warm bodies with their blood singing to him in every step they take, every sweet breath into their human lungs.

He looks at you again, lips pulled into a snarl. He takes one step, the next. You don’t know what makes you do it, but you holster your wand. You back away as slowly as he approaches, until eventually you reach the end of the hall, and you’re trapped.

Malfoy stalks you, and when he comes near, you see a bit better the state he’s actually in. He looks hypothermic, like the ghost of a person. His colourless hair dangles in his eyes. His breath rattles in his lungs, too quick, like an injured animal.

He presses up against you, sickly gaze intent on the part of your lips. His hand slowly lifts and closes around your throat. Not to choke the life out of you, but sturdy. Maybe to hold you in place for it. Or perhaps it’s a warning, or a tether… to something more substantial than himself. You feel the press of his cold palm as you swallow.

“Potter,” he says, softly, though he is all but consumed by his own hunger. How much easier would it be right now for him to drink your blood than to stand here with you fighting it, wanting to so badly his teeth probably ache.

Your pulse thuds against his fingers, and slowly, like a caress, his thumb glances over that deer-quick little jump under your skin.

The sound he makes is small, pained.

Then he’s ripping the bag from your hands, turning his back, sinking his teeth into it. The noises he makes as he feeds… you should be repulsed by them.

But you’re not.

You’re still not entirely sure why you went into Creatures and not the Auror training program. Or, more correctly, why you didn’t _finish_ the Auror training program. Ron’s still sore about it. Hermione was pleased, which makes sense because there’s always been a bit of an overlap between her job as a Healer and yours with Creatures. (Creatures, human and not, are, sadly, both more likely to injure [primarily by accident] and be injured in return [mostly _not_ by accident] than typical humans.) 

Your decision to do this work probably stems from an intricate and possibly unknowable combination of things. Remus Lupin… was certainly a factor. As was Luna and her taking the post of Care of Magical Creatures once Hagrid retired. Your trips to see Charlie and observe his work with dragons might have had something to do with it as well. But maybe more telling is what the department lacks by comparison to the Aurors. 

Namely, you don’t have to arrest anybody. You’re not fighting anyone anymore. It’s not always easy—in fact, it can be bollocks facing a drunk Troll, helping a Banshee who can’t stop screaming, resisting a new Veela who needs to learn how to turn off the charm. But they’re not criminals. They’re rarely all that dangerous. They just need help. They’re different, still scorned, and they’ve got precious little help in this fucked up world.

Current vampire in your house notwithstanding. That one’s an absolute git. 

Seriously, nothing has changed about him that you can tell. He’s morose, entitled, snobbish (he’s turned his stupid nose up at every brand of tea you’ve offered). He’s rude, mean, and offensive, stubbornly taking issue with the help you’ve offered at every turn, judging you as insufficient while refusing to bring in anybody else.

He’s maddening.

But he’s only had one more bout of fever in the week he’s been under your roof. And you’ve learned he’ll drink the fucking tea if Kreacher brings it instead of you.

He likes the blood warmed up, you’ve found, which is common. Nobody could subsist on cold cucumber soup alone, never once sitting down to a hot meal.

He begins venturing out of the guest room the more you experiment with recipes, going so far as to watch you cook, peering into this pot or that pan and, of course, offering critique.

“Have you ever cooked a day in your life?” you huff when he’s condemned your use of sage in the blood pudding (made in a stew of actual blood).

“You’re not the one who’s going to be eating it, Potter, I should think it would be seasoned to my tastes.”

You roll your eyes, draw your wand, and siphon out the spice with a charm, flinging it into the rubbish bin with barely restrained violence.

The arsehole won’t even read the books Hermione diligently drops off every couple of days. _Vampirism 101: Advice for the Newly Turned_ sits gathering dust in a library Malfoy won’t set foot inside. You bring _Bloodthirsty: How to Dine Without Death_ into the study instead, and he literally wrinkles his nose at it.

You take to stacking how-to-be-a-good-vampire books in the hall on the way to his room, setting up a sort of obstacle course he can’t avoid.

He does. It’s you who stubs your toe on _Lick, Suck, Bite: Etiquette for the Undead_ in the middle of the night on the way to the loo.

“Fuck,” you hiss, hopping around on your one good foot. You think you hear a snicker from behind his door, so you shoot him the finger.

Two whole weeks go by. You start to wonder if he’s invested in learning anything at all. He doesn’t seem prone to solo study any more than talking to you about it, and he’s also not leaving. You’re not sure what to do next.

At the end of that second week it’s been raining for three days. The kind of rain that aches people’s joints. It’s a blanket of wet, even sticking to the insides of the window panes, dragging in thick rivers through the streets, blotting out sun, moon, and, for the residents of Grimmauld Place, hope.

Which is—of course, you are _you_ after all—when you decide to push him.

It’s a rare occasion when he hasn’t griped too much about dinner, and he’s actually eaten it in the kitchen, his chair caddy corner to your own. Be that as it may, he’s still a tosser of the highest order, and his constant loafing about is getting on your very last nerve.

“Thought any more about getting on that mail order list Hermione Owled you about?” You gnaw on a breadstick and await his scintillating response, which doesn’t disappoint: He shrugs.

“There’s also the assistance program. Nondiscriminatory housing, fair employment. There are groups you could go to…”

“I’m allergic to groups,” he says snidely.

You roll your eyes to the ceiling, abandoning your breadstick to your plate and sitting back in your chair. “Jesus, Malfoy, you don’t even know the bloody difference between arteries and veins, for fuck’s sake.”

Malfoy snorts quietly.

“What?” you huff.

“‘The bloody difference’,” he says, and hearing your own wording parroted back to you very nearly makes you laugh. The pun was wholly unintentional, but his observation of it feels like… it feels like a shift. Still, he’s Draco Malfoy, and you can’t let him know you’ve just found him clever and interesting. Somehow you keep the disgruntled frown on your face. 

He blinks, humour glinting in his too-silver eyes. He blinks again as his humour fades. And then he leans in. He takes your arm, brings it to his nose, and thanks to your t-shirt and short sleeves, inhales right where the cephalic vein branches, just at the inner elbow (you remember from when you helped Hermione study for A&P). Malfoy nuzzles you, right there. “Vein.”

Then following the sinew upward, slipping from his chair and onto the floor. You cease breathing. He pushes your sleeve up as his nose nearly brushes along your skin. He makes his way over your biceps. His eyes find yours, watching him, and he whispers, “Artery.” 

Then up your shoulder to your neck—your _neck_ —leaving a breathy sigh against your skin, “Mmmm artery.” 

His hand on your knee now, creeping up… up… You’re dizzy from not breathing. When he’s halfway up your thigh—and there’s no mistaking the trajectory he’s following along the twists in your femoral vein and artery—you stand abruptly, putting space between you as you cross the kitchen.

“Okay fine, you know the difference.”

He replies from his place still kneeling on your floor. “There are some things for which one needs no book.”

Your gazes meet. It strikes you then… what his problem is. What it’s been all along. And you feel so stupid. You’re so fucking stupid.

Because he’s _afraid_. It’s fear he’s covering when he tries to look bored, when he’s critical, when he’s aloof. He’s petrified of this. And why wouldn’t he be?

You hold his gaze in yours, feeling a mirror of that fear souring your throat. And you say it. You make yourself say it. “You’re a vampire.” 

It’s the first time either of you has voiced the name of the thing, put it out in the room. It reminds you of how people would refuse to name Voldemort. And yet… this isn’t that. This isn’t that at all. So even though he flinches, you say it again. “You’re a vampire, Draco. And you’re going to be okay.”

You see the tears well up in his eyes, the strong front his upper lip puts on, the sharp and almost beautiful cut of his chin. You step toward him, but he’s on his feet fast. He wipes at his eyes quickly, as though maybe you won’t register him doing it if it’s fast. 

“Leave me alone,” he says, in that standoffish voice, now clogged with emotion. He leaves the kitchen, nearly running up the stairs. You hear his door close. You turn and lean your weight on the counter, closing your eyes. The rain pounds against the window glass, drowning the world.

But after that he starts reading the books. You do a double take on your way out the door to go to work. Because there he is, in the study, feet insolently up on the coffee table, licking his finger and turning a page.

“Should I tell Hermione that’s a good one?” you ask, wary of saying anything at all and so striving for nonchalant.

He doesn’t bother turning his gaze away from the page. “It’s not bad.” 

There’s no goodbye as you leave for the day.

That evening, he’s heating up his own dinner. You stop short in the doorway to the kitchen.

“What?” he spits, all ready defense, wooden spoon arrested mid-stir.

“Nothing,” you say, and fix yourself a ham sandwich.

Toward the middle of the third week, the rain has finally subsided, though it’s anything but sunny. Fog coats everything in sight. It’s as though the city itself needs a rest and has blanketed itself in fluffy down. Things go silent. Wildlife creeps through the garden, every tiny footfall louder in the cotton of quiet.

You’re both in the study, and he’s reading a book.

“Where do you live?” you ask.

His response is immediate. “Are you kicking me out?”

“I—no.” You frown at him, and he frowns at you.

“Then why do you want to know?”

Merlin, what a weirdo. “I dunno,” you say, completely flummoxed. “Just basic human curiosity, I guess.”

His jaw stiffens. “ _Human_ curiosity. Nice.”

You roll your eyes. “For fuck’s sake, you’re human, Malfoy.”

“Am I?” He won’t look at you now. He’s thumbing the pages of his book, making fwapping sounds.

“Well… yes. I mean, you’re not a Kneazle, now are you? You haven’t fundamentally and anatom—” You stop yourself with a frustrated sigh, watching his eyebrow go up, gaze back on you as he waits for you to fuck it up some more. “Okay, you’ve undergone some anatomical changes, but—”

“ _Some_ changes?” he says, both eyebrows now up in incredulity. “You know, Potter, there comes a time when looking at the bright side does more harm than good.”

You sit in the quiet between you a moment. You’d been cleaning your wand before you had the smart idea to talk to the bastard, and now you set it aside with a heavy sigh. You look out the window into a fog so dense it seems to look right back at you. You turn back to him. He looks so posh and relaxed, like he lives here. His legs are long as fuck. His neck too. He’s starting to look pale, like he needs a snack before bed.

“Bright side,” you say, and he spears you with a look of challenge. “You still have your looks.”

Maybe he expected something else, because your cheek seems to take him completely off-guard—and he bursts into laughter. Laughter that sounds like cathedral bells, like running your wet finger around the rim of a glass. You laugh a little, alongside him.

“Bright side,” he joins and then shrugs. “I’m still loaded.”

A fresh round of laughter from you both.

“Bright side,” he continues. “I can pretty much see in the dark now and so can easily avoid stubbing my toe on books fucking piled up right outside my door in the hall.”

You nod, spluttering into something stupidly close to a giggle. “Bright side,” you say and then falter.

“Yes? I’m waiting, Potter. Surely, there’s more to life than good eyesight.”

You open your mouth and then blurt, “Still have a cock.”

It’s not quite as funny as the others somehow, and the way he’s looking at you now… You know that look, and it has everything to do with his thirst.

“That I do,” he says, quieter now. His gaze holds you in place, those mutable eyes unwavering.

You try for a bit of a laugh, but it’s more of a breath. You break the eye contact first, rising. “Well, I think… I think I’ll go to bed.”

You pass his chair quickly. He’s so preternaturally unmoving. It reminds you a little too much of how he’s changed, of what he is now. When you’re nearly to the door though, he says, “Potter,” and you turn. His voice had seemed so close, at your ear even. But he’s there, in the chair still. You can only see the back of his head.

“I live in Chelsea,” he says.

“Oh,” you reply. 

Then, with nothing more forthcoming, you fumble your way out of the room, almost tripping up the stairs in your haste.

You could kick Hermione in the shin, you really could.

“What?” she says, noticing whatever baleful look is on your face before turning back to Malfoy in entreaty. “There are some very reputable clubs these days, safety magicks in place so that those who partake can’t overdo.”

Merlin, the language she uses to talk about this stuff. ‘Partake’, ‘overdo’. Drink blood, kill. That’s what she means. It sounds like rubbish to you. But Malfoy seems to be listening intently as she enumerates the virtues of ‘partaking’ from a live, consenting human being, out in public no less.

“If you’re nervous, Harry could go with you.”

“What?” you squawk. You clear your throat, adopting a much lower register. “What?”

“You wouldn’t make him go alone, would you? It’s his first time.”

Since when is she so Team Malfoy?

“Well, he’s just getting used to it warmed up on the hob and—”

“I’d like,” Malfoy says, interrupting quietly. He swallows, and you think there’s a very faint tinge of pink high on his cheekbones. He did just feed before Hermione popped over unannounced. Could it be that he’s blushing? He looks at you, and it seems like it’s taking a lot out of him to maintain eye contact. “I’d like to know what my options are.”

You must be gawking at him with incomprehension writ large over your face, because he drops his gaze and looks… ashamed?

“I—” you begin helplessly. Hermione gives you some sort of significant look. It’s one you’re used to from her. It often means she’s attempting to steer conversation between you and Ron in a healthy direction after you’ve been arguing. You sigh. “I mean, fine. I’ll go. Whatever.”

This is how you end up at _Transfusion_ , a super hip vamp club on the outskirts between the latest Diagon extension and its equally super hip Muggle neighbours. But hipness aside, Hermione did her homework; this is the most reputable club of its sort with the most reliable magicks and parchment-work that binds a vampire to their word to do no harm, intentional or accidental. Not that it’s ‘Unbreakable Vow’-level stuff. Vampires aren’t to be harmed either. They’re just not allowed to drink more than their companions can easily withstand, and if they get close, the magic intervenes and physically separates drinker from drinkee. “Simple,” declared Hermione, “but supremely effective.”

So here you are, feeling very unposh in your jeans and long-sleeved Puddlemere t-shirt. Meanwhile Malfoy looks like he’s going on a fairly expensive first date, well-dressed in tight trousers, crisp teal ( _teal_ , mind; you don’t know where it came from; you’ve never seen it before) shirt… nervous as hell.

“It’ll be fine,” you tell him stupidly. You don’t have any assurance that it will, and your body is, right now, sending off fiery, end-of-the-world klaxons that it absolutely will not be anything like fine. But you tell Malfoy all the same.

The club itself is loud but not overpoweringly so. Maybe in accommodation of a vampire’s better hearing. The music takes up more space than in a restaurant but less than in a regular bass-pounding type establishment. Not that you’re some big connoisseur of the difference.

You and Malfoy make your way from the front, where you’ve been waiting while the greeter casts a variety of protective magicks over you both. It seems like overkill, since merely walking through the door, the magick was so thick as to make you catch your breath.

When Malfoy stops on the edge of what passes for a dance floor, you run into his back.

“They’re… dancing,” he says.

You look out over the room. There is an amiable crush of bodies, many coupled, some grouped. It’s not always easy to tell who the vampires are, and though maybe you ought to find that worrying, you find it, instead, oddly comforting, for Malfoy that is. But when you look at him, he doesn’t appear comforted in the slightest. He looks like he’s in line to get on a rollercoaster with no safety harness.

You scan the room, find a bar to the far left, and nudge his arm with your own. When he sees it, he nods at you, and you make your way over with him in tow.

“I’ll buy,” you tell him when he takes the seat next to yours warily. “I mean, if you want anything.”

“Vodka on ice,” he tells the barkeep, throat flexing on a hard swallow.

You mask your surprise at his order and make your own, a pint. Of course he doesn’t want to order blood at the bar, doesn’t want to fill up. He has other plans for how he’s going to feed. The reason you’re here hits you squarely in the chest, and you realise you’re gripping the bar so hard your hand hurts. You stop.

“Potter,” he says. 

You look at him with what you hope is an easy-going, even encouraging, expression. And then realise that must look odd, being as how you’ve never looked at him like that a day in your lives.

But he doesn’t seem put off by it. He looks at you, his eyes having changed colour in a pale reflection of the teal of his shirt, and he says, “I’m scared.”

Your heart, your tongue, your brain, everything you need in order to face his confession and answer it, winds up on the floor. You feel gobsmacked, bludgered. _He’s_ scared. The vampire. The one with the sharp fangs and unnatural strength. But right now he just looks like Malfoy to you. Malfoy in a very pretty shirt. You shake your head, ready to offer some, no doubt daft, reassurance, when a dazzling blond (dark blond, not like Malfoy) comes up wearing a low-cut dress and running a finger along her neckline to further draw attention to it, even though her voice comes out a little shaky and shy.

“Er, hi.”

She doesn’t say it to you. She’s zeroed in on Malfoy. Of course.

“Hello,” he says.

She tilts her head, gives him an appreciative look, and asks, “You want to dance?”

“Oh,” he says. He looks at you, for whatever reason, maybe to check if you think it’s a good idea. 

Rather desperately—because you were not prepared for this exact feeling to surface—you fight down the urge to roar that it completely fucking isn’t. Maybe unhelpfully, you shrug instead. It feels like the best you can manage.

He looks back at the pretty girl again and gives her a small smile. “I don’t… thank you, but no.”

Her smile turns coy as she leans in and says, “Maybe not a dance then. Maybe…” She gives a significant look toward the back, which is really the first time you notice it yourself: the dark passage, leading to a dim hall, which leads nowhere you can see but suggests private rooms, crannies, comfortable places to draw a companion close and…

“I’m sorry,” Malfoy says (which comes off uncharacteristically polite). “Not tonight.”

You leave unquestioned the weird rush of relief you feel at his rejection. She nods, her smile going back to something merely friendly. “Another time then,” she says, and at his nod, she turns and winds through the crowd, blending in with them finally.

Malfoy turns to the bar and takes a sip of his drink.

“She was pretty,” you say.

He nods, more contemplation than agreement.

“I mean, if you were worried about finding someone to, er, do this with, it looks like that’s not going to be a problem,” you try. It makes your thighs tense to say it, but it comes out in your normal voice, so that’s good.

He nods again. “Right.” Then he glances at you. “Tell me something.”

You startle a bit. “Tell you… what?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“Oh,” you say. “Um…” To stall, you take a long swallow of your beer. “Okay, well, um…” You scratch your head and say the first thing to enter your utterly stupid mind. “Ron and I measured our dicks once.” At Malfoy’s slowly dawning look of beleagred shock, you continue into the entropy of the moment. “We weren’t, you know, into each other, just curious, so, like, we weren’t hard. We measured them soft. Which is maybe the daftest part of it.” You find yourself delving nostalgically into a laugh. “There’s Ron, _pulling_ on his, right? Trying to get it to stretch, I guess. Which he didn’t need to do. It was probably a tiny bit bigger than mine anyway.”

At this, Malfoy’s eyebrows go up further. Not shock now. You realise it’s disbelief. You begin to blush, dropping your gaze to your half-gone pint. “Bigger soft at least anyways.” You know how big yours gets when you’re erect, after all. Ron’s really got nothing on you then. Not that he needs to know that. 

“That was not at all…” 

“You said ‘anything’!” you shout over him, the humour of it overtaking you, and then, to your surprise, him.

“I did, but… Maybe I should have stipulated a no-dick-measuring clause. In future I’ll remember to do that.” He sips his vodka, his lips on the glass still curved into an infectious smile. “But, I mean, while we’re on this subject, which surely will never come up again…” He looks at you.

You look back, waiting. At his eyebrow going up, you blush. “Oh. You want to know…” You push your glasses up your nose for something to do. “Well, it was a long time ago, and we were using a ruler with some of the numbers worn off so—”

The bloke sidling up breaks your line of sight for a moment, which briefly enrages you, being that you had a clear view of Malfoy smiling at you. Now, when the bloke settles, Malfoy is looking up at him, and the smile is gone. That look of trepidation is back, but he blinks and listens as the man says, “I’m Hugh.”

“Um, Draco,” says Malfoy. There is no good reason you should be irked that ‘Hugh’ is already on a first name basis. Everybody is but you after all.

Hugh says, “You’re beautiful,” and you suddenly become engrossed with the dregs of your beer, drinking half and then staring into the suds. Hugh shifts. He’s all buff arms, wide chest, and tight trousers. He asks, “Would you like to come to the back with me?”

You glance over to find Malfoy’s gaze dropping from Hugh’s, finding you as he swallows, looking like he might flee. But this is why he’s here. And having his back in this place, doing this thing, is why you are. You try to give him something besides a platitude, try to make your head nod. You feel like a statue, stone and rust. Somehow you manage to say to him, “I’ll be right here.”

He jerks into a nod. And then his gaze goes back to Hugh. He stands up. You fight the desire to make a grab for him and haul him out. Instead, you watch him follow Hugh toward the back. Malfoy turns his head once, looking for you, but before his eyes can latch onto your face, he’s swallowed by the crowd.

You turn back, gesture for a new pint, and then drop your forehead onto the bar with a resounding thunk.

What the fuck are you doing here? Malfoy is on his way to the back rooms, to sink his teeth into layers upon layers of muscle, to suck at that man’s skin, and you’re… just waiting for him to come out, lips stained, eyes dazed with it all.

The barkeep sets down a new pint and says, “What’s the matter with you?”

You lift your head. “Hmm? Oh nothing.”

But she frowns and asks, “You anemic or something?”

“What?”

She shrugs and says it again, like it will make sense to you eventually. “Anemic.”

You frown, shake your head slightly.

“Are you one of those militantly heterosexual blokes?”

“I… what?”

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s none of my business.”

“What’s none of your business?”

Her eyes cut to the path Malfoy had made through the crowd with ‘Hugh’, and then back to you.

“No,” you say. “I mean, we’re not even friends.” When she continues to stare at you, you scoff. “He doesn’t want—”

“Yeah, he does.”

Taken aback, you can’t even speak for a moment. She swipes your money off the bar and deposits it in her register and then turns back.

“You don’t know that,” you say. “How could you know—?”

She gives you a disbelieving laugh. “So not anemic, then. Just stupid.”

Your face grows hot. “I’d like my tip back please.”

She smiles—crooked, confident—and it’s only then that you see the glint of it: incisor. She looks you square in the eye then. “I’m keeping your money. I’ve given you something far more valuable, wouldn’t you say?” And then she lifts her chin toward the other side of the room, and you turn on your barstool to see him, Malfoy, pushing through bodies back toward the bar.

He looks wide-eyed and still pale. When he’s close enough, you see that he’s trembling slightly. “Hey,” you say, taking his arm and steering him back onto his barstool.

“No, I just want to go home,” he says. He won’t look at you.

“What happened?”

Merlin, he’s gaunt. Like the first night he showed up at Grimmauld. All that’s missing is the rain.

Without asking, the barkeep slides a double shot of something deep red at Malfoy. He takes it and gulps it down, slamming the glass back down on the bar. He’s panting quietly. She refills him, and this time he drinks half, licking his lips with a shaky sigh.

You blink at him. “You… you didn’t do it.”

To this he simply shakes his head. “It’s no big deal, alright? It’s just… not for me.”

The barkeep lifts her eyebrow at you significantly and then wanders away.

Inconveniently, you remember him backing you into a wall, his hand closing around your throat… the look in his eyes as he thought about it. Drinking you. Taking you.

“Are you okay?” Your voice has gone funny, a little breathless.

He nods. “This is helping.” He lifts the glass and sips. You watch his throat as he swallows… the near perfection of his profile, the way his hair slides onto his cheekbone when he ducks his chin.

“Do you want another?”

He chances a look at you. “I would have thought you’d jump at the chance to leave. This can’t be fun for you, Potter.”

“I’ll buy you another,” you say and signal to the barkeep.

“Thank you,” says Malfoy, and then to the barkeep (her name tag says ‘Fiona’), “Actually, could I have a Bloody Mary, please?”

“Coming right up,” she says, and then proceeds to mix the AB with a couple shots of vodka. She adds a celery stalk as garnish, which strikes you as almost hilariously tongue-in-cheek.

Malfoy sips, cutting his gaze over to you. “So,” he says, “tell me more about Weasley’s dick.”

“Emphatically _no_ I will not,” you laugh.

He laughs. You both sip your drinks. You watch his colour, such that it is, return. The light in his eyes changes from something feral to something almost warm.

“So what’s it like back there?” you ask.

He shrugs. “I suppose you’d say it was dark.” For him, it isn’t, he means. “There are sofas, shadowy corners. It’s what you’d expect.” He lifts a shoulder and drinks.

“Was he too pushy or…?”

“He was fine. I don’t…” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to catalogue my failings as a vampire aloud for your amusement, Potter.”

You lay your hand over his wrist, closing your fingers gently. “I’m not…” you begin. But he looks down at your hand on him and then up into your eyes. The world shifts around him, blurring. Your fingers, where they touch him… it feels like magic gathering for the cast. He slips his wrist free and takes a long drink.

“We can go now,” he says, “if you want.”

You finish your pint, slipping off the barstool and giving a small nod to Fiona before following him through the crowd towards the door. You’re not sure what it is, what insane impetus grabs you like a Grindylow and pulls you under, but… 

“Draco,” you call over the music, halting your steps.

He turns, a look of pleasant surprise on his face before he can stop it. You watch it dissolve into confusion.

“I…” you start. You swallow hard. “I like this song.”

Slowly, his lips part. He stands there taking in what you said, seeming sure that he heard wrong, and then meeting your eyes.

Your heart clatters around in a clumsy imitation of beating. You back away a couple steps, into the throng of people, and for whatever reason, he follows you, step for step, the perplexity reigning still. God, you can’t dance. Nothing good can come from this. You tell yourself you’d just like to see him have a good time, to file this away under ‘good experiences’ rather than bad. You both deserve a little good, you think.

You weren’t lying either; it’s a good song. A seductive beat that even a Troll could find and keep up with if they tried hard enough. You don’t go in for fancy, just dropping into the rhythm of a sway, and a small, unassuming one at that.

Malfoy watches you like your Avis charm just spat eagles… before his gaze softens, and he takes on the bearing of someone more intrigued than appalled. He steps a little closer, and as he does, his hips and torso move a bit. It’s smooth, whatever he’s doing. It looks easy on him. You spare him an encouraging smile, as though he’s the one who needs it. You’re just hoping they don’t save Pensieve phials of their customers’ worst moves to laugh at later.

You decide to concentrate more on what Malfoy’s doing than your own body. Which is in some ways a very good choice. In others, it’s devastating. He dances a bit closer to you. Not touching. But there’s no mistaking he’s dancing with _you_ now, not just in your vicinity. He watches your lips as you lick them. Then he meets your gaze, and a flicker of something almost happy traverses the space.

You and Malfoy are dancing. You’re dancing in a vamp club to a song undoubtedly meant for the grinding of pelvises. He looks more relaxed than he has all night. You decide this is good. He looks good. And your choice to keep him here and dance with him is somehow a small part of that. So you let go a little bit of the anxiety you’ve been feeling since Hermione came up with this barmy idea—and you just… dance with him.

The song changes, but the beat doesn’t, and you find yourself loosening up some. Something about dancing into a new song feels like you’ve both committed to this. You can stop holding your breath. He moves a tiny bit closer. If you lifted your hands, you could touch him. He’s watching your lips again, his pupils gone a soft, liquid black. He steps closer. It’s almost difficult not to touch him now. Your bodies brush accidentally, here and there. Somebody bumps you from behind, and it’s only instinct: Your hand shoots out for his hip, steadying yourself and him both. His hands grasp your lower arms. The moment passes… the very one when you were supposed to let go of him. But you don’t. And he doesn’t. He keeps dancing. And his hands move up your arms, over your biceps, your shoulders. He wraps his arms around your neck.

The fact that now your dick is getting hard, well… It’s just that: a fact. It’s unstoppable. Miraculously, you’re both somehow half-acting like none of this is happening. He’s still just dancing. You’re still just dancing. It’s only that you lift your other hand and grasp his other hip while you do it. His arms flex, pulling him closer into your body. You dance like that, his hooded gaze on your mouth, his breaths shivering out. 

Your hands close tighter on him, and you give the smallest tug. He fits up against you now, flush, and a weak groan comes out of him that makes your hard-on pull up so strong it nearly hurts. You feel his now too. He’s hard. Malfoy’s cock is hard. You wrap your arms around his back. He’s panting against your jaw. One of his hands shifts up into your hair, and he makes a fist.

Alarmingly, you realise there’s a very good chance you could come like this. You’re not opposed to the idea. But…

“Do you want to go to the back?” The words drip from your lips in a voice lower than you were expecting, changed by his proximity, by how badly you suddenly want this.

He _moves_ on you, and you stop a groan from happening only by constricting it to a mildly humiliating grunt. He turns his lips to your ear, and he says, “Not here.”

Cathedral bells, that voice. And Merlin… the slightest caress of his incisor against the shell of your ear.

You can’t leave fast enough.

You take his hand and pull him towards the front. Six steps into the fresh air, you Apparate. On your front doorstep, you fumble out the spells to take down your wards. You drag him inside, slam the door, and press him against the nearest wall. Your thigh fits between his legs, his arms winding their way around your neck again. He likes that, you realise. He likes hanging onto you. You run your hands up and down his body. “Fuck…” you whisper in a kind of disembodied awe. That he’s letting you do it. Letting you run your hands over him.

And then he drops his hands, and starts unbuckling your belt.

“Right here?” you ask stupidly. You’d do it anywhere at this point. If he wanted the roof, you’d give him the roof, complete with awkwardly painful spires.

“Bedroom?” he suggests.

And god _damn_ this is happening. You pull him in and Apparate again, landing in your bedroom with him in the next instant. You were not prepared for how this evening has turned out. There’s dirty laundry flung over a chair, socks on the floor. You should have chosen his room; he’s no doubt less of a slob than you are. Or if he’s not (he’s a Malfoy, used to elves cleaning up after him), he hasn’t had as much time to wreck the room that you have yours.

But he’s not looking around the room in disgust. He’s looking at you like… Like you never imagined Draco Malfoy would look at you. His fingers rake lightly through your hair before his palm settles on your jaw. “I’ve never… kissed anyone like this.”

You were expecting a different end to that sentence, which you realise must also be true. Holy fuck. “Er, neither have I,” you manage. Because you haven’t. Kissed a vampire, that is. Being that your cock just got so hard it’s about to bust through your jeans, zipper and all, you don’t think you’re going to have a problem with it.

But Malfoy looks simultaneously like sex itself and endearingly shy.

“Does that mean you want me to kiss you?” you venture. Grinding on a dance floor and belt-unbuckling aside, you figure it can’t hurt to ask.

The wink of sharp tooth you get with his smile makes your blood race, even as he tosses out, “How stupid can you get, Potter?”

“Pretty stupid,” you supply, leaning in, your gaze riveted on his good-natured sneer, until you close the distance, and his lips part for you. Your tongue tentatively darts into his mouth.

Time stops. Seriously. You’ve used a Time Turner before, and this is what it feels like. His breath in your mouth. His tongue finding yours, the almost sweet closing of your lips together. And then… smooth razor’s edge along your tongue. Slow… so slow… so that he doesn’t draw blood. You slip your tongue out of his mouth. His sigh turns into a disbelieving little laugh. It’s so sexy you could die of it. He licks your bottom lip and then gently sinks his teeth into it, tugging a little. You relax, giving yourself over to it, to him. If he bites you, he bloody bites you. In for a pound and all. You assumed that’s where this was going anyway. But he releases you, your lip springing from the deadly trap of his teeth, and then his tongue is in your mouth, like a teenager in a backseat. You think you can taste the vodka he drank… and the warm saltiness of the other. You take his jaw and hold him still. He gasps.

“Stay like that,” you tell him. His lips remain parted for you, his fangs merely flirting with visibility. You tilt your head and lick between his cool lips, flicking an incisor. He shivers like you just took his cock in your mouth. You flick it again, your audacious tongue over the elegant weapon of it. You do the other, just to hear the whimper that comes out of him. He opens enough that you press inside, your tongue over his, his teeth bracketing you. Fuck, it’s good. You consider telling him that he could make you come this way if he wanted.

Maybe he knows, because he palms your dick through your jeans and squeezes just right.

“Draco,” you warn, lips barely lifted from his.

He smiles a little, backing away. And then he begins to strip. You’re on him, unable to stop yourself, ripping his pretty shirt open, dragging it off his arms. He pushes your t-shirt up and off. You kiss again, his cool chest pressed to your overly warm one. He moans into your mouth, hands roaming up your stomach, over your chest, squeezing your shoulders, your biceps. He’s on your jeans again, yanking to get at what he wants.

Before you know it, he’s on his knees. He flashes you a look, a smile.

“Oh _fucking shit_.” It’s only now occurring to you the multiple ways this could blow your mind.

“You trust me?” he asks, voice slurred a little with arousal and the protuberance of his fangs. He blinks up at you. “Or is that the appeal? That you don’t.”

You take him by his sleek hair—and guide him toward your cock.

Still trapped in your boxer-briefs, it strains for him. He opens his mouth and grazes his teeth over the bulge. Your knees weaken, mouth dropping open. You didn’t expect him to go straight for the danger of it, but you’re unapologetically thrilled that he has. He mouths down the length and then laps over your bollocks, rubbing a hand over your erection slowly. Up and down, up and down. It would be hypnotic if it weren’t also incendiary.

By the time he gets you out and aimed at his mouth, you’re a sticky fucking mess. He doesn’t seem to mind. His tongue laps under the crown until you leak even more. Then he gives a soft chuckle, and he takes you inside, between his stretching lips. You’re not sure how he’s not hurting you, but he isn’t. Maybe he can retract the fangs at will. All you know is that the sensation of him sucking your cock (Draco Malfoy is _sucking your cock_ ) is all softness, all lips, tongue, even throat— _Merlin_. It’s your fingers stroking his hair off his face so you can see his cheeks hollow out. It’s your hand cupping his jaw, feeling how he works you. It’s his tongue, so wet and slow. It’s you, beginning to thrust easily into his mouth.

He moans on you, lets you use him, glancing up at your face as you look down on him. He looks… content, turned on, at ease. You hold the base of your dick and withdraw from between his lips. He nuzzles you, seeming to enjoy the slide of your cock against his cheek. Then his lips part, his fangs shining in the dark, and he turns his mouth to you, letting you feel the sharp sting, just barely. You gasp. He blinks slowly, his lashes fluttering against his pale cheeks, and he scrapes his teeth down your length until you’re crying out from it, so aroused you might come on his face.

Maybe he realises, is attuned to you and your all-too-ready cock, because he rises, gives your jaw a chaste kiss, and then crawls into your bed.

“Like this,” he says, lying on his stomach and showing you the most perfect arse you think you’ve ever seen. “So I’m not tempted,” he adds.

You’re joining him on the bed even as you start to say, “But I thought…”

He lifts his arse, and there is no thought in the world more important than memorising what that looks like: the adorable shape of it… a soft glimpse of his opening when he shows it to you shyly. You whisper a lube charm and line up against him. He moves his hips, his cock against your sheets, his arse against your cock, a gentle whine coming out of him.

“Oh fuck,” you breathe. “That feels… Fuck, so good, Draco. Fuck, hold still so I can get it in.”

“You say that a lot when you’re turned on.”

“Fuck?”

“Yeah.” 

He parts his thighs, and you rub yourself over his hole. “ _Fuck_.”

He gives the softest little laugh. And you find yourself answering it. 

“ _You_ say it.” Because it’s all you want to hear. His voice. Saying that. To you.

He undulates against you again, and not quite shagging someone has never felt so good.

“Fuck,” he says, breathy, beautiful. Then he stills, pert arse tilted to take you.

You grasp yourself near the head, brush over it, push. You go in easier than you expected, his groan greeting you as you slip inside inch by inch.

“You good?” They’re the only words you can manage. It feels so lovely inside him, you’ve already lost most of your addled mind.

“Merlin, yes,” he says, and you can hear the drop of his fangs in his voice. You wonder, if he’d chosen to do this face-up, or to ride you, or to fuck you instead, if he’d already be drinking. 

A pang, something you didn’t even know you _could_ feel, reverberates through you at the thought.

But then he shifts, barely shaking, and a twin desire takes hold of you, just as strong or stronger, with no hint of confusion or indecisiveness to accompany it. Your cock is throbbing inside him, and everything in you insists on thrusting.

You do, fucking a soft sigh from his lips. Braced on either side of his shoulders, you pull your hips back and then sink in again.

“ _Ohhhh_ ,” he cries. You feel that sound in your thighs.

You fuck him languidly, at first, steadily. If only to keep hearing him make that sound… like you’re taking him apart. 

“Fuck me harder,” he finally says. Like it hurts to go this slow.

You change positions, setting your knees on the outside of his, for leverage, for how fucking good it feels, and then you pound into him. His arse rises into it, eager, the little whimpering sounds and breaths he lets out, punctuated now by the fuck itself. 

You’ve never done it like this. You’re not even sure what ‘like this’ means. Only that you’ve never lost anything during sex before. You’ve always stayed yourself, stayed right where you are, the pleasure a thing you experienced like everything else for you: under your control. Not separate from you.

This thing… it wants to own you. It wants to rip you in two.

You can’t even tell him you’re close… that you’re going to come inside him soon. But he wedges a hand under his body, and you feel him doing it… that quick, purposeful wank. Feverishly you fuck him. You’re panting. You _need_ this. You don’t want to finish first like some selfish git. But you do.

You do you do you do you do you do. “Christ.” Your voice tears out of your lungs as you bury yourself in him, slipping through your own come, head dropped to his cool back.

He makes a soft, sweet sound, and he’s suddenly gripping you tighter. It forces a groan from you. He’s coming underneath you, still stretched open on your cock, and he cries just a little, a blood-tinged trickle from the corner of his eye. You smooth the hair off his face, and his fangs are fully visible, shining with promise. You lean down and lick one, dick still thrumming with pleasure deep in his body, not yet even starting to go soft.

He whines but then clamps his lips closed, turning his head away. The rejection isn’t so terrible, not with adrenaline cascading over your very bones. Not when you ease down and pull him close, his body flush to yours and your arms around him from behind. You nuzzle into his neck and feel him shiver. You push your cock deeper, and he groans, his pleasure at it unchecked.

It takes several minutes… the unspooling of your breath, the calming of your heart. You realise, even with the intensity of it all, his heart never rushed like yours did.

You slip out as you finally roll onto your back beside him with a hedonistic groan. He turns his head to look at you, and there’s the faintest smile there, something nearly shy. “I need a minute,” he says. And then you watch him get up, his beautiful body a lithe reflection of light as he moves. Holding out a hand, he Summons a blood bag and then disappears into your en suite with it. You can’t hear him feeding from the place where you loll on your bed, but after a few moments, the sink comes on, and he splashes a bit.

You’re unsure what to expect. But when the door opens, Malfoy just comes back to bed with you, crawling in and pulling a sheet up over both your bodies. He moves in close, dropping his forehead against your shoulder.

“Do you want to sleep?” you ask him, while inside you’re blaring with another want, a new one. _Have me, have me, have me, have me, have me,_ your body sings. _I’m right here. Take me, Malfoy._

But at your spoken question, he nods. When you lift your arm around him, he fits himself to your side willingly. You take his hand and rest it over your heart, letting him feel how warm you are, how ready. But he lies so still against you, it’s like sleeping with a human-shaped rock.

And you do sleep. Eventually. Holding his hand to your chest, you fall into it. And when you wake next, your hand is empty.

You go to the refrigerator in the morning to count the blood bags, assuming they’re still there. You’re not sure what it means that they are. Malfoy is certainly nowhere to be found. 

You ready yourself for work and leave the wards open to him—like they are only for Ron, only for Hermione—before you go.

Not five minutes in the office, Wright pops his head into your door. “Potter. Got something for you.”

You push your glasses up your nose and think, _Anything but paperwork._ The last few weeks have seen you neck-deep in parchment, and it’s never the reason you got into this line of work in the first place.

“Ipswich,” Wright says. “Thirteen year-old metamorphmagus. Every time she’s sneezes, she grows a beard. Long one. She’s got a head cold,” he finishes with a wince. “You have time?”

You are positively oozing with time. “Sure.” You gather up your coat, take the file from him, and leave.

“Could have gone to Mungo’s,” says the mother when you arrive. She ushers you into a modest cottage, a bit like the Weasley Burrow but without all the levels. She whispers as she draws you through thin hallways, “But Dottie don’t like Healers. We’ve told her you’re a regular bloke.”

“I am,” you agree with what you hope is some reassuring charm.

“Hi Dottie,” you say when you’re shown into her bedroom, your approach slow and careful. 

She’s sitting on a chair, staring morosely down at the high-tops on her feet while she kicks at what appears to be her wand, lying on the ground.

“Dot,” her mother pleads. “How many times have I told you that you’ll break it like that?”

Dottie shrugs, and you think you hear something like, “Wish it would,” from under her breath.

“Would you mind if I spoke with her alone?”

The mother looks wary, and you’re quick to assure her it will be five minutes; she can leave the door open, or she can stay if she likes.

“No,” she says, casting a worried look at her daughter. “No, I need to be getting ready for work.”

She leaves the door ajar, and you go sit on the foot of Dottie’s single bed, facing her. The light from the window becomes a lattice across the floor, reshaped through laces curtains.

“Dottie,” you begin, but her soft voice rises and interrupts you.

“D,” she says. Her eyes meet yours briefly and drop again.

“Dee?” you ask, “Like with two ee’s?”

“No. Just the letter. Just D.”

“Oh, okay. Cool,” you say.

Her gaze flits back to you again, perhaps to judge if you mean it… that you think it’s cool. She’s got an edgy haircut, shaved in some places and long in others. Part of it is green. Her walls are thick with band posters, mostly scary looking, not at all the pink and bubbly picture you’d had in your head on the way over. You don’t know why you made that assumption. Maybe because you’ve never actually seen a thirteen year-old girl’s room before. You’d only glimpsed Ginny’s at the Burrow, and it had been Quidditch-themed in the extreme.

D whispers something that sounds like ‘bollocks’, and then takes two great breaths and then…

Her sneeze brings on a mousy brown beard, clear to her stomach, complete with handlebar mustache. She turns her face away from you with a wobbling whimper.

“Hey, it’s alright,” you tell her. “You’ll get better at controlling how you shift.”

“I want to be better _now_ ,” she manages through tears. 

“Well, there are some things I can teach you. I’m not a metamorphmagus, but I’ve learned a fair bit about it. And my godson’s one,” you add.

She sniffs. “He is?”

“Too young for Hogwarts yet, but yes.” You lean your elbows on your knees, moving just that bit closer. “Is that what you’re most afraid of? That it’ll happen there?”

She nods. “They already think I’m a freak.”

“Do you not know any other metamorphs at school?”

“Just a few. None in my year.”

“That sounds lonely.”

She looks at you now, square in the eye. Her beard has all but disappeared as you and she have talked. She blinks and then asks, “Does your godson ever… change into a girl?”

“Yes,” you tell her readily.

She doesn’t so much as kick her wand now as gently nudge it. “Only by accident or…?”

“No, sometimes he just likes to.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You give her a small smile. 

Her eyes on the movement of her wand under her shoe, she says, “I might… like to.” She shrugs. “But it’s like… what if this is happening,” she gestures to her face, “because I’m… wrong… inside?”

“It’s not,” you tell her. “You’re not wrong. You just have a cold with a very interesting symptom.” She looks up at you, tears hanging heavy in her eyes before falling. “You can be whomever you’d like. And I can teach you how to stop the beard thing, that’s easy. But if you want to be a boy, or a girl, or neither, or both, beard or no beard… there’s nothing wrong with that, D.”

She wipes at her eyes. She nods, though she looks like she doesn’t yet quite believe you. 

“Do you want to learn a bit of magic to help you not grow a beard when you don’t want to?”

At this she nods unreservedly. 

“Okay, you’re going to need your wand.”

Slowly, she picks it up.

“So, before we begin—and I promise you, you can learn this magic in about ten minutes and there will be no more accidental hair growth, okay?”

She nods, taking a better grip on her wand and then running a sleeve under her nose.

“You need to know something vital,” you say. Her eyes go wider, and she leans in, mirroring your pose. “You need to know that you, D, are a metamorphmagus. And that makes you bloody well unstoppable.”

Her eyes light up, either at the sentiment or the fact that an adult just used such language in front of her. But whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. It only matters that she’s now, almost but not quite, smiling.

It’s been two days. You’ve brushed off Hermione’s worried Floo calls. But truth be told, you’re worried as well.

When you arrive home after work on the third day of Malfoy’s absence to find your house as empty as you’d feared it would be, you very nearly panic. You’re not really a panicker. It’s more that you have the intense desire to grab your wand and Invisibility Cloak and run into the night, not stopping until you find him.

You make yourself stay put. You eat your dinner, read the evening paper. You answer some post—an Owl from Gin about the Harpies win last weekend, and one from Neville inviting you to his Gran’s birthday party. 

But by then it’s nearing nine o’clock, and to say that you’re antsy is putting it mildly. You think about finally employing Ron, off the books of course. Malfoy doesn’t need a team of wand-happy Aurors hunting him down. But even if were just Ron… You fold the paper and fling it across the kitchen table away from you, running both hands through your hair. This isn’t something you want to share. This, whatever it is, is between you and Malfoy.

But you can’t do nothing. It’s not in you. So you dress to go out, leave the wards open again, and then Apparate to the pavement outside Transfusion.

A scan of the crowd reveals nothing, so you go to the bar. It’s your luck that Fiona’s working, and when she sees you, she shakes her head. “Not here,” she says when she walks within earshot.

“What?”

“He’s not here. You want a drink?”

“Oh, er, I’ll have a Firewhiskey.” You’re not sure you want one, but you think it’d be rude to take up her time otherwise. Your heart’s begun to speed up. “So, he’s not here tonight, or…?”

“He hasn’t been here since I saw you last. I’ve worked every night, I’d know.” She pours your drink, and you tip her generously. “I wasn’t wrong though, was I?” Her lips quirk.

You sigh. “No. You weren’t.”

“So… he took off? After he bit you?”

“No, he didn’t bite me, we—” You swallow and watch her cotton on.

“Ah,” she says, leaning her elbows on the bar. “Good?”

“What?” You splutter into an uncomfortable laugh. “Fiona, you don’t even know my name, I really don’t know you well enough to—”

“You’re Harry Potter,” she says. “And it was, wasn’t it? It was good.”

You process that she knows you the same way you always do when that happens. It’s the rest of what she’s said that snags on something inside you, pulling painfully. “Apparently not, since he ran off.” You sip your drink, hating how morose you must sound.

“Honey,” she says, “everyone within ten feet of you knew it was going to be good.”

When you chance a look at her, her fangs shine at you happily, and you can’t help an embarrassed shrug. “Yeah. Okay, it was good.”

She nods. “He doesn’t want to to hurt you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Yes, you would,” she says, and then when a new customer hails her from down the bar, she winks at you and wanders away.

You take a sip and turn your head, watching the few couples out on the dancefloor swaying under the lights.

His hands on you… his face transforming with pleasure… everything a prelude to what you thought would end with him feeding from you. And then it didn’t. Fiona’s not wrong. What happened… it was good. It was more than good. But you find yourself gazing off into the dark of the tunnel that leads to the back—and wondering. 

Not wondering.

_Yearning._

You sigh, slowly finish your drink, and get up to go home.

He wakes you from a dream again. You know it’s him. You can feel it.

Your wards would welcome him, so you’re not sure why he’s outside knocking. Surely not politeness; he’s not using a polite knock. Can he not feel that your magic practically wants to drag him inside? If he’s in a state, he might not be able to translate that sort of subtlety. If he’s… hungry.

You don’t bother with dressing in more than your pyjama trousers before you pad downstairs. But you do walk; you don’t Apparate. You need these few steps to solidify what you’re about to do. What you’ve known you would do since well before he ever left. He can probably hear your heart from outside the door.

You step off the last stair and into the hallway, you door a dark shape at the other end of it. Wandlessly, you lift your hand and simultaneously unlock and open it.

When he just stands there, his body practically vibrating to get at you yet remaining perfectly still, you lift your hand again, send your magic his way, and curl your fingers. As though Imperio’d, he steps over your threshold. Under the foyer’s light you can see the perplexed frown on his face, and you spare him a small smile and a shrug. He needs to know the power you, too, can wield… that you’re not helpless in this. That you’re his match.

He takes three bold strides toward you, and then stops, his hand on the wall as he drops his head, trying to control it. “Just get me a bag,” he grits out.

God, he’s so fucking stupid. But the fact that he’s even now—even though he came to drink the hell out of you—trying not to is oddly moving.

“No,” you say calmly.

His head jerks up, and you see the severe drop of his fangs, the wide circle of black in his eyes, crowding out the mirror-like grey.

You force your arms to relax by your sides. You feel much more naked now that he’s looking at you like he is. “Draco,” you say and hear him growl quietly. “Yes.”

He stalks toward you, this time unhesitatingly, though paired with the desire coming off him like Fiendfyre, you see the barest hint of his fear as well. You take a deep breath, and you let him approach. With everything in you, you invite him. And when he collides with you and backs you into the wall, your breath leaves you in a heady rush, and your pulse pounds with wanting him.

Still, he doesn’t bite. He presses you hard to the wall at your back and looks at your neck, his teeth bared, his body so ready it must actually be painful. You cup his jaw, and his gaze darts to yours. You run your thumb over his bottom lip—and then you deliberately turn your head, offering it.

His arms wrap around you fiercely. You feel the warm gust of his breath first, soft lips opening on your skin. Then, not his teeth, but his tongue. A gentle, reverent lick over the place where your artery beckons. “Potter,” he whispers. And then his fangs sink into you.

It hurts. You knew it would, of course. But you clutch onto his body with a gasp. He hauls you in tight, roughly, your blood springing into his mouth before he clamps closed on you, and he sucks.

And then… it doesn’t hurt much. It’s _ecstasy._

He’s so bloody strong, and he holds you against the wall with ease, his face buried in your neck, low sounds coming from him as you go lightheaded. You were half-hard just walking downstairs, but now. Now you’re close to orgasm. There’s a magic he’s exuding while he does it; you don’t even know if it’s on purpose. But it’s slowing the drain of your blood. And it’s threading through you now like a drug, reaching into your dark corners, thrumming you like an instrument. It’s like he’s touching you everywhere all at once. 

Weakly, you wrap your arms around him and hold on. Somehow he’s worked your trousers down your hips while he drinks, and his hand finds your bare arse, at first cupping you gently, kneading you, before you feel his fingers drag up your cleft.

Suddenly, you want it so badly, it gives you a strange kind of strength. You kick your trousers off, ripping into his at the same time. He reads your intentions correctly, pressing you even harder into the wall when you climb him, legs bracketing his hips, and you both manage to guide his cock until he’s inside you. You gasp out a lube charm, even as he’s fucking you hard straight away, never lifting his head from your neck, only making a low, muffled sound of satisfaction when finally he’s doing both.

You sink your nails into his shoulders, taking him, panting. Oh God, you’re already going to come. You inhale a broken breath, and it starts. He grunts, lips suckling at your neck, and he buries his cock in you, pounding you into the wall. He’s close as well. You shake with the ferocity of it, making these sounds, breathy and weak, every time he plunges his cock into you. Your neck aches, your arse. He’s so hard and he’s going so deep. A tear leaks from your eye. 

His hands grip your legs hard, and he growls, tight and feral. He fucks you faster. It’s happening for him too. You burn all over for it, for how he feels inside you, how much it’s taken out of you. You’re warm and trembling. The fuck slows, long and deep—and then just deep as he holds himself still within you. His mouth lifts, and his tongue laps over your skin. His healing magic slowly closes the wounds.

Your stroke his hair, and he lifts his head, meeting your eyes. Your blood stains his lips, his chin.

 _God._

It should be horrifying. Except that it’s heart-stoppingly intimate. He pushes himself into you, hard and slow, and watches you gasp from it. He licks his lips, and some of your blood gets swiped into his mouth. Not all of it. And before he can clean himself up any more, you take him by the jaw, angle your head, and, feeling him tense for it, wary, you kiss him, your tongue meeting his, finding your taste there, a soft tang, already disappearing.

As hard as he fucked you, as deeply as he ravished you, drank from you, his kiss is tender now, letting you explore the taste of it, letting you flick over his incisors while you relish the answering moan into your mouth… the possessive way his cock pushes hard into you one last time.

You kiss him until he slips free of your body, and you ease your feet to the ground again. 

When you’ve caught your breath, he asks, “Why?” his voice dancing over your skin like touch. “Why did you let me?”

“Let you,” you scoff weakly. “Draco… I was _dying_ for you to.”

His small frown remains, and you let your fingers drift over his lips and chin, sending a gentle cleaning charm over his face. You lean in, kissing the corner of his mouth. His lips instinctively part.

A cold breeze wafts over your body and the gasp you inhale becomes a rueful laugh—because the bloody front door is still open. 

“Fuck.” You slam it closed with a flick of magic from your hand. He presses you against the wall in a way that feels inarguably proprietary, his still-clothed body shielding your naked one.

You like it. You like everything about the way that you feel: fucked out, drained, marked by him.

“Where did you go?” you ask.

His gaze goes to the wound he’s made on your neck. He watches the backs of his knuckles caress it… takes in the resulting whimper you make. “In circles,” he says.

“Mm,” you reply. “Care to take a rest here? From your circ—” The dizzy spell swoops in on you like a Bludger, but Malfoy’s arms tighten, and then he’s lifting you off your feet again, though this time his arm slips beneath your knees, his other around your back.

“You need replenishment potions.”

“Well, you don’t have to _carry me to them_ , for fuck’s sake.” Though it feels rather good. You’re suddenly so sleepy, you hardly care how he’s got you, so long as you don’t have to master something so difficult as balance, as walking.

He hikes your nude body tighter into his arms. “I could carry you to Finland.”

“Er, no thanks?”

“I feel strong enough to.”

“You’re a wizard, you know. You can Apparate.” You wish he would. To your bedroom, not another country.

“Do you know why I’m as strong as I am right now?”

You roll your eyes. “Because you’re a vampire and—”

“Because I’ve got Harry Potter’s blood coursing through my veins.” 

“Oh,” you manage, something tightening deep in your body at him saying it. The way he’s looking at you… like you’re magic itself… Your dick tingles, even though you’re too tired to fuck again. 

Then, he ruins it. “You bloody idiot.”

His smile is a complicated thing. In it is all the distrust you’ve learned to expect when he’s afraid. In it, too, is something that wants to be elated, that wants to let go.

“Just take me to bed, tosser,” you say, sinking into his arms, letting yourself. “I need my rest if I’m going to fuck you nonstop for the next seventy-two hours.” Maybe you’ll take an extended holiday. Fucking Draco Malfoy seems more than pertinent to your life right now. Though you could simply be drunk on what just transpired.

“Mm,” he answers. His mercurial gaze meets yours. Your reflection swims in his eyes.

“Take me to bed, Draco,” you say, verging on passing out.

He tightens his arms around you. And then he does.

_Six Months Later_

You watch him at the far end of the dining table, diagonally across from you. He’s listening to Arthur tell Muggle stories again, his attention rapt on each word as he nods here and there. Fork arrested on its way to your mouth, you watch Draco drink from his goblet, licking the blood free of his lips, and then laughing at something Arthur has said.

He’s much more relaxed now than he was earlier. He always gets nervous to go to the Burrow. So, before you left, you let him pound you into the kitchen countertop, taking you roughly from behind. It relaxes him, to fuck you. It was completely magnanimous on your part, of course.

You touch the bruise he left on your neck, a fond smile drifting onto your face, remembering how you’d had to beg him to do it. He hadn’t wanted to fill up of course—he hardly ever drinks that deeply from you anyway—so he only took a little. Just enough to make you come from how hard he latched on, his hand fast on your cock, while you chanted, “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop, Malfoy,” like someone with a death wish.

He finds your gaze while you’re blatantly staring at him, and you give him a wink, finally taking a bite of your food. He transforms with the vampire equivalent of a blush. You have to look really hard to see it. But you’ve got good lately at discerning the change.

“It’s nice to see him looking healthy.” Hermione snags your attention away, leaning closer so she can say it quietly, only for you. Then she adds, “You’re good for him,” and you find yourself scoffing, heat building up the back of your neck.

There’s a sly smile on her face even as she shakes her head at you. “Merlin, you’ve gone and done it.”

“What?”

“Fallen for him.”

“Have not,” you reply on instinct. Though it’s occured to you lately too. That either you’re at his or he’s at yours, and when you’re not there or he’s not at Grimmauld, you’re mostly thinking about him anyway. Doesn’t mean… what she said, though. It just means…

You look at him again, at the far end of the table, now appearing extremely put-out by whatever Ron’s saying. Draco’s leaned back in his chair, a parody of relaxation, forced, his jaw taut. There’s a fire in his eyes, a frustrated set to his body. You find yourself smiling. Because he’s not going to lash out; he’s just going to sit there like that, being appalled by Ron and fuming, because… Well, because _you_. And because this. This is something, wary though it makes him, you know he almost slightly enjoys. You think maybe he misses his common room, holding court over his friends. But here, he’s not king, not emperor. He’s just Draco Malfoy, annoyed vampire, and Harry Potter’s date.

You think he likes how loud the Weasleys are, how cramped their dining table, and how everyone has to avoid everyone else’s elbows. He’s never had that. Except at Hogwarts. He puts up with it at least. And he never complains when a dinner is coming up. This makes his… his fifth, you think.

You realise that you’re grinning while you watch him being so bloody irritated it’s coming off him in waves. He looks over at you, for a moment spearing you with that same angry face, and it does something to you. Something… good and also amusing and maybe a little bit… hot.

Then he rolls his eyes and turns his attention back on your best friend, his posture easing just a bit. For you.

“Fuck,” you say, turning back to Hermione. “Why the bloody hell do you have to always be right?”

“I need to study,” he says, though he’s letting you undress him.

“Mm-hmm.” You open your lips against his neck, and you suck. Not like he can, but you do your best.

He groans. You can feel him getting hard. You’ve been hard, mortifyingly, since before you left the Burrow, a blackberry cobbler thrust squarely into your hands by Mrs. Weasley. Which was, in hindsight, fortuitous, since it kept people from hugging you and, well, feeling your ‘ardour’.

You seriously could not get Draco back to his overpriced little flat in Chelsea fast enough.

“The entrance exams are Monday.”

You snort from your place on your knees, in the middle of taking his trousers down.

“What?”

You sink your fingers into the crack of his arse, still annoyingly covered with the cotton of his pants. You rub against the dip of it. “You said ‘ _entrance_ exams’.”

“Good Salazar, your sense of humour is atrocious,” he says with exasperation. “Small children are more sophisticated.” Though his cock is rising into the nuzzling your face is giving it.

You make quick work of getting him naked and face down on his super posh bed. “You’re going to pass with flying colours. You’ve had the best of tutors.” (Hermione, obviously.) You kiss down his back on the last of your reassurances. “You’ll be the best fucking law student they’ve ever had.”

“You just want in my pants.”

“What pants?” you say at the dip of his lower back. And then you open the globes of his fine, fine arse and eat him out.

Bloody hell, you love this part. Draco writhing on his bed, pushing his arsehole into your face and letting you lick him open. You groan into it, going inside, your cock stiffening drastically when he pries his legs open even wider, beginning to tremble. You can and have made him come like this. But not tonight. Tonight, you want to fuck.

You flip him over onto his back, and he lifts his legs so easily, it almost takes your breath. That this is who you’ve become. That he welcomes you on top of him, inside of him. In his home. That he’s at ease in yours. At ease with himself. Or nearly. 

He takes your cock gently in his hand and guides you while you brace yourself over him. Trying for the fit, the tip of one fang sinks into his bottom lip guilelessly.

“I…” you start to say, full of it to the extent that you nearly just say it, just to tip a little bit of it out; you’re close to overflowing. But then he cants his hips, and you nudge at him, enter him, and what rushes out instead are safer words, true words, but not the words you were going to say. You slide into his body and in a gush of breath you confess, “I fucking need you.”

His answering, “Have me, Harry. Take me,” is as close to a reply to your unsaid words as you can conceive. And so you do. You have him slowly. So slowly he cries under you, his gaze beseeching you. You flick his nipple like you know he likes, and he arches into your rough thumb, eyes squeezing closed. He reaches down and pulls on his dick, as fast as he probably wishes you’d fuck him.

He comes with his legs open as hell, chest pressed wantonly to your pinching fingers. It’s mostly dry, like it always is. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the pleasure he takes in his own body because of you...the ecstasy blooming all over him in sweeps of electric magical force.

You come buckets inside him though, which he always appears to love.

“That’s it,” he breathes to you as you fill him up, as you groan and fuck and lose yourself. He takes his own legs and pulls them back more. You look down at it, how stretched he goes around the reddened base of your cock. And when you pull out, how it leaks from him.

“Put it back in,” he says, voice slurred over his fangs.

You sink inside once more.

“God, you’re still hard,” he says.

You start to fuck him again, rougher this time, provoking sharp, untamed little whining noises from his throat. This is what he wants… for you to fuck him absolutely raw.

It stuns you, how well you’ve come to know his body, his desire, _him_.

You know you likely won’t come again. The best you can hope for is to go long enough to give him another orgasm. And that’s your fucking goal in life lately.

You roll him on top of you and let him ride. You stroke his stomach and chest, his thighs, and watch him get closer and closer. There are times you want to gather him up, hold him flush against your body, and feel his trembling become your own. But tonight you stop yourself. You just want to watch him.

Draco Malfoy plunges himself down on your cock, his head dropping back a little, eyes closed. You take his dick in your fist and lazily pump it, watching the head slip through the hole you’ve made for it before returning your gaze to the art that is his face.

His eyes open, an otherworldly metallic blue, and he meets your gaze with something you thought you’d never see from him. His smile is so real it stops your heart. His fangs shine in the small light in the room. And everything else dissolves.


End file.
